Rep. Joe Walsh to Eric Holder: You better resign immediately, buddy

posted at 7:58 pm on October 26, 2011 by Tina Korbe

It was faint at first, but it grows ever louder, this cry for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) today became the fourth Congressman to explicitly call for Holder to take responsibility for the lethally reckless Operation Fast and Furious and to voluntarily leave his post because of his presumed authorization of the program. Walsh’s behest follows similar requests from Reps. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.).

Walsh today sent a harshly-worded letter to Holder, in which he asked Holder to “resign immediately and issue an apology to the American people [he has] failed to serve.” Walsh also took Holder to task for his stonewalling of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Fast and Furious.

But the most memorable portion of the letter came, not at the beginning, when Walsh lambasted Holder’s understanding of his job, nor at the end, when he called for Holder’s resignation. It came in the middle, when Walsh delved into the seemingly-obvious-but-not-yet-confirmed motivation for the program:

Your Department has made an enormous error in judgment. It instructed federally-licensed firearms dealers to illegally sell at least 2,000 guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) intended to be trafficked to drug cartels in Mexico. The results of this error in judgment have implicated the United States in well over one hundred deadly crimes and the deaths of two federal agents.

This not only raises serious questions about your ability to serve as the head of the Justice Department, but also begs the question of why an anti-gun Administration would knowingly force licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals. I raise this because Operation Fast and Furious — if the facts of this case had not come to light — would have been used by this Administration as another false argument to attack law-abiding American gun owners.

The American people deserve to know if your Department had any intent to link the legal purchase of firearms here in the U.S. to crimes committed near our southern border. Operation Fast and Furious funneled firearms legally purchased at gun shops in the U.S. to known criminal syndicates to prove these syndicates have access to legal purchased weapons. This is a deliberate attempt to vilify and attack the millions of gun owners in America who value our Second Amendment and have never broken the law.

Walsh’s posited explanation appears to be the only plausible one. Why else would the administration authorize the program — then fail to follow up to catch the criminals the program was purportedly designed to catch? Had ATF made any kind of legitimate attempt to track the weapons — had they not allowed the guns to so completely disappear into the hands of violent criminals — it might have been believable that the administration sought to use the program to disrupt the power of Mexican drug cartels.

Yet, Walsh’s explanation is not a fun one to believe. It’s sickening to think anyone in the administration would really be so rash and so ideologically driven as to risk the nearly inevitable results of this program — the deaths that did, in fact, result — just to prove the point that legally purchased weapons show up at violent crime scenes, just to suggest the government ought to make it harder to legally purchase guns in the first place. It’s even more terrifying to think someone as high up as Holder would be.

Walsh and the rest are brave to call for Holder’s resignation — but they definitely should. Walsh isn’t afraid to take the matter to the president, either.

“If [Holder] fails to [resign], I would ask that President Obama dismiss him immediately,” Walsh said today.

Then again, Obama has stood by Holder through all kinds of nonsense, so no real reason exists to believe he won’t stand by him now — unless F&F somehow becomes well-known enough to threaten his reelection.

Blowback

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Comments

Acknowledging that this is a post by Tina, I think I understand Ed’s predicament. I do believe he tries to be honest and forthright in his presentation of his understanding of the facts. I don’t think he’s trying to shield Obama but he’s also in the position of being accused of running some batsh*t crazy anti-Obama hatefest site if he lets his own words run a bit too hot. We can call Obama a lying, corrupt, Islamo-sucking POS all day long. Ed just doesn’t have that luxury, nor do I think he’s inclined to. Fact is, all we know about Ed is what he wants us to know about him by his writings. What is that…maybe 10% of the guy? For me, that’s enough. I don’t really care about the other 90%. I have my own life to slog through.

It is just too big to be a purely domestic political ploy. Someone is arming the Sinaloas for a proxy war against Los Zetas. The gun control angle was intended as cover if the op was exposed, and gravy if it wasn’t.

novaculus on October 26, 2011 at 10:45 PM

I second that theory and agree that the secondary effects of this operation are gravy to the admin, as long as they remain secret. The gravy comes in via the method—the sale by US stores, purchase by illegals and southward border transit are key components to getting the gravy, if you will. The CIA, if they wanted to, could arm the Sinaloas tomorrow with a ship, planeload, truckload of weapons just toot sweet. Someone made the conscious choice to roll the dice and decided to conduct multiple purchases of weapons and then move them across the border, use them in hits and either get killed in the process, or maliciously drop them at hit scenes to be found later. I submit that the theory of the proxy war needs to be drilled further, particularly considering the opulent state dinner between Obama and the Mexican President Calderon’ within the last 1-2 years. You are right, this is a multifaceted operation with multiple objectives, one of which is domestic gun control policy, another being arming Sinaloas, and another to facilitate drug and people trafficking into the US where the Democrat party is working to build their base and other Democrats notably have their first priority as “the immigrant people.” We have only scratched the surface on this one.

‘It’s even more terrifying to think someone as high up as Holder would be.’
It’s even more terrifying to think that the entire regime is of the same mindset.
‘unless F&F somehow becomes well-known enough to threaten his reelection.’
Bingo! This is how people end up beneath the bus.

It’s sickening to think anyone in the administration would really be so rash and so ideologically driven as to risk the nearly inevitable results of this program — the deaths that did, in fact, result

Sickening… but typical Leftist thinking.

Does anyone believe there is a shred of decency remaining on the Left? Just look at their mouthpieces MSNBC and OWS. They have a totalitarian worldview and there is nothing that will stop them in implementing it.

I have long thought that the plan would be to let this build until election. IF dummy wins reelection the dogs of war will be turned out and he will be promptly impeached. If he loses the election it will quietly be dropped and Holder or some other underling will take the rap. Meanwhile, other operations the country is running will not be put at risk of being exposed and the games continue.

The qustion the GOP fails to ask is why the president of the US sought two things – to have a civilian army as large as the military (for what? for use against whom? why?)coup[led with this clearly Chicago-mob type of having people killed to get more (unlimited?)power by taking away the guns of those that would certainly resist his army -should he loose them against civilians.

This is clearly the stuff associated with dictators and Obama needs to be called on it -impeachent is too soft.

There has to be something bigger behind an operation this size that involves so many players and took such monstrous risks. I don’t doubt that authoritarian socialists like Obama and Hillary would do whatever they thought they could get away with to disarm the American people. But I can’t believe that sharp retail politicians would risk complicity in hundreds of felonies and connection to hundreds of homicides to advance such an unpopular domestic political agenda. The potential payoff, which might actually backfire and go negative, just doesn’t justify the risks.

Multiple agendas had to be served to move all these players. Multiple layers of smoke protect the actors responsible. The desperate stonewalling that carries its own profound political risks is a dead giveaway that responsibility goes all the way to the top. This bloody mess is just beginning to unwind.

Walsh’s posited explanation appears to be the only plausible one. Why else would the administration authorize the program — then fail to follow up to catch the criminals the program was purportedly designed to catch?

What am I missing? It’s really tempting to say “duh…..where ya been?”…. but that would be childish.

The United States government is an accessory to the deaths of hundreds of Mexican civilians. How would we respond to the reverse? I know it will never happen, but someone high up the food chain needs to do some serious federal time for this. And all this just to make American gun owners look bad. Clearly, innocent life means little to the American Left when cheap political points are at stake. There are going to be some serious questions asked when these dirtbags get to the Pearly Gates and are refused entry.

One of the traits of a narsisisst is protect their self image. Anyone, anything, or any situation that becomes a threat, they distance themselves from. His Rev. Wright of twenty years is agood example. When Wrights views became a libility to Obama, Obama decided he did not known Wright as well as he thought, even after twenty years as a member of his church.

The real questions center around how much of a threat Holder is to Obama’s self image verses how needed does Obama feel Holder is to deal with other threats, and Obama’s state of mind and perception of reality is at the time he notices the problem.

My bet would be that Holder is thrown under the bus and his friend, comrade, and understanding confident, Elizabeth Warren, is named as his replacement.

Soros will be very pleased with his useful idiot appointing one of his trusted servants as AG.